Eric Lee

Australia: The article will appear this Friday, 7 October, on Workers Online.

Finland: Here is my article, published by SAK, a Finnish national trade union center.

Germany: For those of you who read German, here's my article for Jungle World.

Italy: For those of you who read Italian, here's my article which appeared in Il Manifesto this week. Coming soon -- my article for Rassegna, the weekly publication of the 5.5 million member CGIL trade union federation. (Awaiting translation and publication.)

Norway: Now available in the trade union publication LO-Aktuelt Another article appeared in the daily newspaper Klassekampen.

Posted by Eric Lee at 01:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm leaving St. Louis today, but I'm not leaving this subject behind.

First of all, I have to write no fewer than 7 articles that have been commissioned by trade union and left-wing newspapers in Australia, Norway, Finland, Germany and Italy. When those are done, I'll link to them and probably publish the English-language original versions here. This will give me the opportunity to pause and reflect on what has happened here in St. Louis this week.

I'll be completely honest with you, though. On the one hand, I can understand perfectly the views of a friend, one of my fellow journalists covering the convention, who called it a 'dog and pony show', an orchestrated attempt to cover up what he called a totally unprincipled split in the labour movement, a power grab by some union leaders who had no real reason to split the AFL-CIO.

But on the other hand, having sat through hours and hours of convention discussion yesterday, hearing not only such impressive figures at the top as Tom Woodruff, Bruce Raynor and Andy Stern (and these are genuinely impressive figures), but even more moved by what local union leaders were saying -- one cannot help but hope that these people are right, and this is a new beginning.

Here's a thought: one of my closest friends is getting very interested these days in "what-if" views of history -- you know, what would the world be like if, say, Kennedy had not been assassinated, or if the American South had won the civil war.

Let's think about a different kind of what-if scenario: what if the CIO had not broken away from the AFL back in 1935. What if those who think that 'unity' is a sacred word had persuaded John L. Lewis and Syndey Hillman to come back into the 'House of Labor', and the CIO had never been born. Would the explosive growth of union membership in the 1930s -- most of it coming to CIO unions -- have happened?

If you could go back in time, would you tell Lewis and Hillman that they were making a mistake? Probably not. Most people agree that the birth of the CIO did offer real hope to American workers, and marked a new beginning for the labour movement in the USA.

Anyway, just some thoughts on the morning after ...

Posted by Eric Lee at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

St. Louis, Missouri struck me as an odd place to choose to hold the founding convention of new labour movement in the United States. It is not actually that easy to get to and there are few tourist attractions around to make the place particularly appealing. But when I heard that in this city, nearly a fourth (22%) of all workers belong to a trade union, I began to understand. (In the USA today, some 8% of private sector workers belong to unions, down from 35% a generation ago.) St. Louis symbolizes a time in America when workers could join unions and better their lives.

The seven unions which met here this week have decided to call themselves the Change to Win federation. They have broken away from the AFL-CIO, the national trade union center formed 50 years ago. And their inspiration clearly comes from the launch of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) back in 1935. One of the seven union leaders here, the fiery Bruce Raynor of UNITE HERE (a union uniting clothing and textile workers with hotel and restaurant workers), spoke about what things were like 70 years ago. Back then, he said, being a steel worker or an auto worker was not considered a great job. Unions made those great jobs -- made those workers into middle class people. And unions can do the same today, he said, for health care workers, for janitors, for all the low-paid, non-unionized workers in America today.

Raynor's union has joined together with such giants as the Teamsters (headed by James Hoffa, son of the legendary Jimmy Hoffa) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which is the largest and fasting growing union in the country. While other unions seemed to be in terminal decline, the SEIU grew by some 900,000 members in recent years. The architect of that success has been their organizing director, Tom Woodruff. Woodruff has been named to be organizing director of the new federation, which will devote -- it claims -- $750 million a year to organizing new workers into unions. Three fourths of the budget for the federation will go directly into organizing. Its bureaucracy will be tiny, and its leadership small. Hoffa said the new federation needed to be a 'lean, mean organizing machine'.

The federation seems to be putting less emphasis on such traditional goals as politics and legislation, but this is because it takes a different view of what unions must do these days. For the unions in Change to Win, the question is not whether unions should do this or that, but whether they should exist at all. For that reason, everything they do is now focussed on organizing. Even their support for political candidates will be determined by this. If hypothetically a Republican politician supports changes in the law that makes union organizing easier, and the Democrat does not, the Change to Win unions will back the Republican -- even if that candidate is wrong on a whole range of other issues. That's how central rebuilding the labour movement is to their vision.

Critics have pointed out that the split between the seven Change to Win unions and the rest of the American labour movement is somehow unprincipled. And one journalist called the St. Louis convention a "dog and pony show" -- a stage managed affair with little democracy and genuine debate. Which might well be true. But as you listen to the SEIU's Andy Stern, or the brilliant organizer Tom Woodruff, you begin to get the point. And the point is that without a radical change in the way unions do business, there will be no more unions within a generation here in America.

The federation already made history on its first day by naming a woman, Anna Burger, as its chair. This is the first time that a national union federation in America has done so. (One can imagine the cigar-chomping construction union boss George Meany, who lead the AFL-CIO in its early years, spinning in his grave.) And they named as the number two in the federation Edgar Romney -- the highest ranking African-American trade unionist in America, ever.

Change to Win is going to try to do strategic organizing in a way it has never been done before in America. While its proposals to merge unions in the AFL-CIO into industry-wide giants was not adopted, the new federation will streamline unions along industrial lines. And they mean not only not to compete with one another, but not to compete with unions which remained in the AFL-CIO. On the eve of their convention, the SEIU announced an important no-raiding agreement with the state, county and municipal workers union, AFSCME. And they are fighting to remain members of state labour federations and city labour councils, despite the opposition of the AFL-CIO's national leadership.

The federation has also expressed its support for the formation of strong global unions to meet the challenge of global corporations. Concrete examples of cross-border solidarity were given, including the Gate Gourmet dispute in Britain, and the efforts to unionize First Student bus drivers in the USA.

Probably the most moving part of the convention was the repeated testimony by rank-and-file workers about their struggles to form unions. I know this may come as a shock to trade unionists in the Nordic countries, but in the USA, if you try to form a union you are likely to lose your job. There are huge and powerful corporations which will be familiar to you (such as Wal-Mart, Federal Express and McDonald's) which do not tolerate unions in any of their workplaces. To hear about the people organizing in such hostile environments was truly inspiring. These people are real heroes.

Maybe the split is unprincipled, and maybe these seven unions could do all this within the context of the AFL-CIO. But listening to stories of the campaigns of school bus drivers working for the British-owned First Group, or the workers at uniforms giant Cintas, you just have to hope that Andy Stern and his colleagues are right, and that this really is a new beginning.

Posted by Eric Lee at 11:08 AM | Permalink

There are really two ways of looking at the founding convention of the Change to Win Federation which took place in St. Louis on Tuesday. On the one hand, some journalists called it a "dog and pony show", meaning a carefully stage managed event that was designed to cover up what was essentially an unprincipled split in the American trade union movement. The other view was that this marked a turning point in American labour history, an event comparable to the birth of the CIO in 1935. Having sat through the entire convention, I'm not sure both views are mutually exclusive.

The convention was organized by seven unions which broke away from the AFL-CIO, the sole national trade union center in the United States for the last 50 years. Unlike Italians, Americans have little experience of multiple national trade union centers, and the very idea that there could be more than one is a radical one. To those unions which have chosen to launch a new federation at this time, the issues are simple enough. It is not a question, they would say, of whether unions should do this or that, or make this a priority and this not. It is a question of the very existence of unions in the United States. It has become increasingly clear to some -- not all -- American trade union leaders that the catastrophic decline in union membership in the last generation, dropping from 35% of the workforce to 8% (in the private sector), raises into question the very existence of unions. If the decline continues, they argue, in a few years, there will be no unions at all. Furthermore, they way, we can feel the effects of living in a country where unions have become so weak. Hurricane Katrina proved that.

The unions that have broken away to form the new federation include the country's largest, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), headed by the charismatic Andy Stern. The SEIU has grown by hundreds of thousands of members in the last few years by using imaginative and aggressive organizing campaigns. None of the other six unions founding the new federation have had anything like this success; in fact, most of them have suffered from declining membership. They are hoping that some of the SEIU's "magic" will touch them as well, and concretely -- that making Tom Woodruff, the architect of the SEIU's success, into Change to Win's organizing director will mean that all the unions will now grow rapidly too.

Everyone will have their own views of what the highlight was of this one day affair. For me, it was Woodruff, pacing around the stage, using PowerPoint to show the problems unions face, the challenges they need to meet. He showed off the gross inequality in America, and reviewed some of the salaries and benefits enjoyed by corporate bosses. He gave one example of a CEO who had a house with 25 bedrooms and 30 bathrooms and asked -- "What kind of man is so full of shit that he needs 30 bathrooms?" The crowd roared.

Bruce Raynor, the firebrand president of UNITE HERE -- a union which brings together clothing and textile workers with hotel and restaurant workers -- also brought the crowd to their feet with a series of angry messages. He talked about how some companies, such as United Airlines, stole workers pensions from them and demanded that bosses like that should be put in jail. But he also had a clear message of hope, harking back to the days when his predecessors founded the CIO in 1935. He said that at the time, being a steelworker or an auto worker was not considered a great job. But the unions made those great jobs, turned those workers into middle class people. Unions can do the same for janitors and for nursing home workers today, he said.

So yes, it was all a bit of a dog and pony show, and some of it would have been incomprehensible to an Italian trade unionist (such as the singing of the national anthem, the prominent display of national flags, or the blessing of a Protestant minister). But maybe it was also a bit more than that. The Change to Win federation is talking about spending $750 million dollars a year on organizing -- something unheard of in the history of the labour movement in the United States. They are putting battle-tested organizers like Tom Woodruff in charge of the task. It was easy to be cynical in St. Louis this week, but it's also possible to be hopeful. Maybe this is a new dawn for American workers.

Posted by Eric Lee at 11:07 AM | Permalink

I just sat in on a question and answer session with a relaxed Andy Stern, president of the SEIU. Stern surrounded himself with purple-clad workers from Texas and fielded questions -- including some tricky ones -- from journalists.

Stern was asked repeatedly about politics, and he confirmed that individual unions in the Change to Win federation would continue their political work. But he emphasized that workers in the USA did not have a party of their own.

He mentioned author Thomas Frank who had written that Democrats were perceived as being latte-drinking, Chardonnay-sipping owners of Volvos -- and Stern said that this was not just a perception, but the reality. The Democrats may be supportive of the workers in their hearts, he said, but not in their heads.

When asked if the coalition/federation had set any goals for how many new members it would recruit, he said that it was too early to say -- but we'd know more in the spring. But the SEIU, which now has 1.8 million members, would have 2 million in the near future, he promised.

One journalist commented that many of the things being said on the floor of this convention would have been welcomed at the AFL-CIO convention too. Was this causing him to have second thoughts? Stern replied that it would probably have the effect of making some AFL-CIO affiliates question why they weren't here.

Asked why the construction unions were exempted from the new federation's compulsory strategic sectoral efforts, he pointed out that those unions had a long history of working together -- while unions like the SEIU, the UFCW and the Teamsters had not worked together in the same way.

He spoke about how the unions, including SEIU, were giving their very best people to the new federation, giving the example of Tom Woodruff, who he called the architect of the SEIU's explosive growth. Tom would be organizing director for the new federation, he said.

Asked about whether the new federation would have a communications strategy, he talked about cellphones and the net, about his own experience as a blogger, and the SEIU's innovative PurpleOcean.org website.

Posted by Eric Lee at 08:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

The BBC website -- which makes an effort to cover the world -- has no mention of this event. I've just written to them to complain. If your local news media are not covering this convention, I urge you to write to them -- now. Tell them about this blog. Thanks.

Posted by Eric Lee at 08:27 PM | Permalink

Several delegates have gotten up to speak about the struggle to unionize bus drivers in the US who are employed by a British-based company, First Group/First Student. Now they are showing a film with British workers -- members of the Transport and General Workers Union -- expressing their solidarity. The Teamsters and SEIU have been working together very closely on this campaign, and you can find more details here: http://www.drivingupstandards.org/

It's great to see a concrete example of cross-border solidarity, or as Andy Stern says, "workers of the world unite" (or was that Karl Marx?).

Posted by Eric Lee at 08:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Instead of eating lunch, the Leadership Council of the Change to Win coalition met for the first time. They added three people to their group, as the constitution provides. And they confirmed Edgar Romney and Anna Burger as the Secretary-Treasurer and Chair of the new federation, according to a report now being presented by James Hoffa of the Teamsters.

As Hoffa points out, this is the first time that a major union federation in America has elected a woman as its head, and Romney is the highest ranked African-American in the history of the labour movement in the USA.

Posted by Eric Lee at 07:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The next 4 hours will include the following:

* Our covenant for growth: Joe Hansen (UFCW)

* Our commitment to growth: Doug McCarron (Carpenters), Tom Woodfruff (SEIU)

* Our commitment to electing leaders who share our values: John Wilhelm (UNITE HERE), Marite Elena Durazo (UNITE HERE)

* Our commitment to each other: Terence O'Sullivan (Laborers)

Stay tuned ... and keep sending in those emails and comments.

Posted by Eric Lee at 07:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

For those of you who are emailing me, sorry -- I can read your messages, but for some reason my server for answering you is not working, so I can't send out the replies I've written. If anyone knows an SMTP server I can use for today, I'd appreciate it ... please email me. Thanks.

Posted by Eric Lee at 07:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Nobody's breaking for lunch, as journalists race around from room to room to meet and interview leaders of the seven unions which have set up this Unite to Win federation. Here in the press room, we just had the chance to do a short question and answer session with Bruce Raynor and John Wilhelm of UNITE HERE.

Some of the questions were relatively tough -- like how would adding $12 million from the Unite to Win per capita dues to the $750 million already being spent make a big difference? Raynor chose to emphasize that it was not the dollars -- though they mattered -- but the sharing of organizers and experiences that really counts.

The UNITE HERE leaders denied that talks were taking place with the National Education Association (NEA) -- which is not affiliated to the AFL-CIO, but did say that Change to Win chair Anna Burger was talking to the AFL-CIO.

Raynor gave an example of the kind of thing the unions will do by describing a strike in New Haven some years ago when the joint action by thousands of union members (from different unions) paralyzed the city and led to victory.

Posted by Eric Lee at 06:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Jonathan Tasini is sitting right behind me doing the same thing. You can see his blog this morning here.

I'm amazed by what we can do with the new technology -- could anyone have done anything like this 5 years ago? I mean you can now read accounts of what is happening at a major trade union event by participants as the event is taking place. Extraordinary stuff.

Posted by Eric Lee at 06:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Joe Hansen, president of the 1.4 million member United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) has just proposed adoption of the constitution for the new federation. "We are here to change course," he said. "Adoption of the constitution is the first step."

The constitution proposes what James Hoffa called a "lean, mean organizing machine" -- a federation of unions with a small bureaucracy at the center, committed to spending 75% of its income on organizing.

A small Leadership Council will run the new federation, and strategic organizing will be the focus of Change to Win's activity. The fee for membership will be only $0.25 per member per month -- far lower than what the AFL-CIO currently charges its members.

Like the CIO in the 1930s, the constitution obliges the new federation to focus on industry-wide organizing, spanning across multiple unions.

As I write these words, Anna Burger is providing delegates with a summary of the constitution.

Posted by Eric Lee at 05:39 PM | Permalink

SEUI President Andy Stern was the third union president to address the convention this morning. Wearing the union's trademark purple colours, he roused the audience with a fiery speech about the centrality of organizing new workers.

Stern was the first of the speakers to quote Karl Marx -- maybe the only time we will hear this today. Talking about the need to take on global corporations, he proposed taking the slogan of "workers of the world, unite" and turning it into a reality.

Stern's accounts of how peoples lives have been changed by being union members -- illustrated by bringing members to the attention of the audience -- were genuinely touching.

At one point Stern asked all the rank and file trade unionists in the room to come to their feet. Most of these seemed to be SEIU members. He made it clear that the new federation is for them, for the rank and file workers.

Posted by Eric Lee at 05:08 PM | Permalink

Bruce Raynor of UNITE HERE was the second major union leader to address the Change to Win coalition this morning.

Raynor is a real firebrand. He repeatedly brought the audience to their feet. "Somebody ought to go to jail for the theft of United Airlines pensions!" was a typical line.

But the main focus of his speech was the struggle to unionize Cintas, a giant uniform corporation -- a joint campaign between UNITE HERE and the Teamsters. A large number of Cintas workers addressed the crowd, speaking about the campaign -- and the victories they have recently experienced, and challenging all affiliate unions in the new federation to give them support.

Raynor emphasized the connection between the birth of this new federation and that of the CIO 70 years ago. Steel and auto workers became middle-class because of unions, he said. Laundry workers at companies like Cintas can become middle class, too, if they can get the right to form unions.

Two Cintas workers led the hundreds of participants in a chant of "No justice, no peace" and Raynor concluded, "God bless our coalition."

Posted by Eric Lee at 05:02 PM | Permalink

Teamster president James Hoffa, wearing a blue Change to Win t-shirt, was the first union president to address the founding convention of the Change to Win federation this morning.

He called the union leaders -- and the unions themselves -- the G7. (The G stands for growth, and the 7 -- for the 7 founding unions of the new federation.)

He reaffirmed the federation's commitment to spending the staggering sum of $750 million a year on organizing, and pledged that the Teamsters would never leave the new federation.

When he asked the more than 900 delegates and guests if we would succeed in organizing Wal-Mart, he was greeted with a roar of approval.

Posted by Eric Lee at 04:57 PM | Permalink

Yesterday, Monday, 26 September 2005, marked a turning point in the history of the trade union movement in the United States. Or it didn't. It all depends on who you talk to.

Yesterday marked the opening of the founding convention of the Change to Win Coalition, a federation uniting seven unions -- the Teamsters, Service Employees International Union, Carpenters, Laborers, Farm Workers, United Food and Commercial Workers, and UNITE HERE (clothing, hotel and restaurant workers).

According to some leaders of the AFL-CIO, the split which tore apart the "House of Labor" this summer had nothing to do with differences over organizing or politics or anything that really matters. Addressing the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) two weeks ago, one AFL-CIO officer denounced the unions which had broken away as "splitters". It reminded me of a scene in the Monty Python film, "Life of Brian".

According to the leaders of the unions which have left the AFL-CIO, today marks a new dawn. T-shirts being distributed to participants in today's conference in St. Louis proclaim "New hope for American workers".

I am in St. Louis now to see for myself what is going on.

Last night began with a "celebration" held in the St. Louis Convention Center, across the street from the (unionized) hotel where today's proceedings will begin. The opening speaker was the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who had just returned from New Orleans. Jackson delivered a powerful address in the style made famous by Southern civil rights leaders like his mentor, Dr. Martin Luther King. And it revealed just how close the new federation would be to the traditions of the civil rights movement.

Jackson was followed by a group of four Missouri state representatives who read aloud a resolution the state legislature had passed welcoming the convention to Missouri. The mayor also spoke. OK, it was a bit of a time-waster, but when Jim Hoffa came forward to speak, everybody woke up. Hoffa really had only one point to make, and it was to ask participants to avoid drinking beer. Not all beer -- after all, this was a union convention -- but the beer distributed by a St. Louis company locked into dispute with the Teamsters union. The company was trying to reduce the workers' wages, cut their health benefits and so on. Hoffa called on delegates to join the Teamster picket line on Wednesday, after the conference adjourns.

But what struck me was how ineffective unions still were in getting their message across. For example -- today, I am scheduled to meet up with a local trade union activist, someone who is not a Teamster but belongs to another union, and in the emails we have exchanged, he's offered to buy me a beer. And the beer he's mentioned is the one the Teamsters are boycotting. Obvously, this is not the grapes boycott of the 1960s. Even trade union activists here in St. Louis don't seem to know about the boycott.

Hoffa also boasted of the union's success in convincing the hotel in which the conference would be held to stop buying the boycotted beer. But he added -- for the next 30 days. After that, the hotel is free to go on buying the boycotted beer. I can remember a time when the aim of a boycott was to stop people buying a product until the dispute was over, and not only for the next month. I guess we live in an age of diminished expectations.

Hoffa and other speakers made reference to both the size of the organization and its name -- and the more I listened, the more confused I became.

In a handout given to journalists, the coalition claims to have "more than 5 million workers". But several speakers referred to "6 million members". A million members is nothing to be sniffed at -- and it's about time unions were honest about how many members they really have. Back in 1973, at the founding convention of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, St. Louis-born author and activist Michael Harrington announced that this organization would be the first in the history of the American left to be honest about its membership figures. Change to Win could learn something from Harrington, and tell everyone how many members it really has. If the number is closer to five million than six, all the better -- it will make growth seem even more impressive.

Some critics of the new federation claim that only a couple of its unions actually grow -- usually citing the SEIU as the only one that really does know how to organize new members. But most of the Change to Win unions brag about growing. For example, the smallest of the unions here -- the United Farm Workers -- claims that "union membership has grown with fresh election and contract victories" since the new president came into office eleven years ago. And every one of the affiliated unions has put organizing on the very top of their agendas.

As for the name, it seems to be "Change to Win" -- without the "coalition", or anything else. But one of the speakers last night -- I think it was Hoffa -- made reference to the change of name, saying that it would from now on be the "Change to Win Federation". Anna Burger, the chair of the coalition, told me that the name would simply be "Change to Win". This really ought to be sorted out before the business cards are printed ...

But all of that is secondary. What really matters is the issue that divides Change to Win from the AFL-CIO and that issue is organizing.

Two things came to mind while reading through the material and listening to the first speeches.

First, even though Change to Win will actually charge lower dues -- only $0.25 per member per month -- they will spend more (much more) on organizing than the AFL-CIO unions. The coalition (or federation) is committed to spending 75% of its income on organizing. According to one handout, which claimed Change to Win had 5.4 million members, it would be spending far more money in absolute terms than the much larger AFL-CIO. In fact, it was claimed that "the collective organizing expenditures of our affiliates and the federation at all levels will easily approach $750 million per year." That's a staggering sum, and if unions can't pick up new members after spending $750 million a year, then we're really in trouble.

Second, the union seems to have an utterly different approach to politics than that of the AFL-CIO. Ask the AFL-CIO what they want to achieve in politics and you get a long shopping list, including stopping free trade agreements, fighting to defend social security and pensions, health care, and so on. But Change to Win has one and only one concern. "The new federation's role in politics will be centered on growing the American labor movement," they say.

And this goes to the very core of the thinking behind the new federation.

Here's the basic idea, as I understand it. If unions represent around 8% of the private sector workforce today, that means that their ability to influence legislation, elections, and so on is severely limited. With such a tiny percentage of the workforce unionized, unions barely exist. So the question is not what unions shall do, but a more existential one -- shall there be unions at all?

Change to Win is starting from the assumption that the very survival of the trade union movement is at stake. What is needed is not to decide on a agenda for unions, but to actually create those unions to begin with.

Without a strong trade union membership, nothing else can be done.

Now, I can see the arguments on both sides of this question. I mean, it is certainly important to defeat Bush's social security agenda, for example. And it is probably important for unions to back Democratic politicians who would promise to do that. But the days when powerful unions could decide elections seem long gone. And Change to Win's argument does seem to make sense: first, build the unions. Then, everything else.

Today begins the formal convention, which lasts for only one day. Blogger Jonathan Tasini has already pointed out that this too is remarkable -- unions traditionally hold week-long affairs in resort towns like Las Vegas. (St. Louis, for all its charm, is not Las Vegas.)

Today will focus on organizing campaigns, including the Houston janitors, Advance Demolition, Cintas, school bus drivers, Smithfield Foods, DHL and hotels. It will be addressed by all the key leaders of the coalition, including Jim Hoffa, Andy Stern, and Bruce Raynor. Eight hours after it begins, it will all be over. Delegates will head back to their homes and the real work will begin.

Posted by Eric Lee at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (21)

Seven years ago, I was talking about the Internet to leaders of one of Britain's largest unions. I suggested that we consider sending out a mass mailing -- by post -- to inform the union's members about our new website. "Can't do it," they said. "It costs too much money." It turned out the union simply could not afford to mail to each of its members, and its only regular communication with members was its quarterly magazine.

It struck me then that a union which is unable to communicate with its members is powerless. Imagine if the union needed urgently to get all its members to do something, such as to send protest messages to the government about something. A union which cannot contact the vast majority of its members within a reasonable period of time is not serving its members properly. Why have big national unions at all if this is the case?

That was seven years ago. Now, everything is different. In modern industrialized societies, the vast majority of our union members will have access to email. For large national unions, this means the problem is solved. There's little or no cost involved in writing to every single union member whenever a union leadership feels the need to.

Except that there's one little problem here.

In general, unions don't have the email addresses of their members.

There are obvious exceptions. Unions of academics often do. So do flight attendants unions in some places. But my experience with British and other unions shows that those are exceptions. Most unions have extensive databases of their members, including home addresses, phone numbers, and so on, but very few have email addresses of all or most of their members. An even smaller number make use of those email addresses.

Some are prevented from doing so because of the very nature of the union. I know one large blue-collar union in Canada which not only doesn't have its members email addresses, it doesn't even have their names. That information is collected by local branches and is not shared with the national union. As a result, if the national union wants to communicate with all its members, it has to do so indirectly, through the locals.

Recently I met with the communications director in one of Europe's largest unions -- a union which has an excellent website, which campaigns and in general seems on the ball with communications. But when I asked about how many email addresses of members the union had collected, I was met with a blank stare. While some specific sectors may be organized that way, and while locals might have done this, the national union has nothing like it.

In the USA, I was shown the email campaigning system of one of the country's most effective unions. It was truly impressive, and the union had in fact collected a tremendous number of email addresses for its members. Nevertheless, three-quarters of the membership either did not have email addresses (unlikely) or were not sharing this information with the union.

Unions need the email addresses of all their members in order to be effective. In the twenty-first century, unions that don't have those addresses are like paper tigers.

Here are some ways they can go about getting members' email addresses:

1. When signing up new members, make sure to collect their email addresses. Make it a required field. Potential members who don't have email addresses should be given addresses by their union. If they don't have computers or access to computers, local unions should make sure that they know how to get access -- in their union hall, public libraries, wherever. In many unions, turnover of membership is so high, that merely by collecting the email addresses of new members, within a few years the union will be able to reach all its members.

2. Incentivize the branches. I spoke the other day with an organizer for a small British union who told be that local organizers are actually paid for every new member they recruit. I don't know how common this is, but it struck me that unions should think of ways to reward locals which produce the most email addresses. That reward could be non-monetary -- simply publicly recognizing locals which reach the target of 100%, an email address for every member. But unions should consider other ways of persuading local activists to do their utmost to get email addresses for every member, including prizes and rewards.

3. Run campaigns and competitions online for your union members -- and harvest their email addresses in the process. This is what LabourStart does both with its ActNOW campaigns and its annual Labour Website of the Year competition. Of course it is essential that members opt-in voluntarily, and not be tricked or lied to about this.

4. Sometimes, the employer makes this easier for us, intentionally or not. I've worked with one union whose members all worked in the public sector and for a single employer. That employer gave each worker an email address according to a very specific formula, involving their first name and last name. The union was able to correctly guess the vast majority of the email addresses and generate a mailing list that worked.

5. And here's the most radical solution of all: give those members who agree to be contacted electronically by their union a break. Reduce their union dues. The economic logic is compelling: if I cost the union less money because I don't need to be sent stuff by post (saving on postage, printing, and labour), I should share in the cost saving.

If your union has found other ways to get the email addresses of members, I'd like to know about it.

Of course it's not enough to collect email addresses of members. You have to know what to do with them. I worked with a large British union which discovered to its surprise that it actually had 18,000 email addresses of members. That was a small percentage of the full union membership, but it was still 18,000 people. We were able to do two mass mailings to those members before the union leadership basically ran out of things to say, and the mailings stopped. Amazing, but true.

Collecting the email addresses of members is essential, but it is only the beginning. How to do mass emailings, how to make them effective, what not to do -- those will be the subject of a future column.

Posted by Eric Lee at 08:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The following article, published in the most recent issue of Labour Research magazine, was out of date before it ever saw print. Working together with the union and the global union federations, we were able to make use of online campaigning tools both to send protest messages and to raise money. Nevertheless, the article does point out the importance of launching such campaigns on time -- striking while the iron is hot.

We're more than a decade into the Internet revolution and British unions still hardly make any use at all of the power of online campaigning.

Last week, for example, strike action at Gate Gourmet and British Airways shut down most of Heathrow Airport. Tens of thousands of passengers were stranded, people's holidays were ruined, and yet there was widespread public support for low-paid workers who were sacked by megaphone and ordered to leave the premises.

It was the perfect opportunity for a rapid-reaction Internet campaign.

The union could have had an online campaign up and running the same day as the strike began. Members of the public could have been flooding the two employers with the demand that they bring an end to the strike by the only means possible: negotiating a fair deal with the workers.

When thousands searched the net for information about their flights, the union could have used Google's keyword based advertising to ensure that anyone looking for 'Gate Gourmet' or 'British Airways' would have found a union site with updated information, laying out the workers' case.

This dispute was another test of British unions' use of the new communications technology and once again they have lagged behind.

I think part of the reason for this is skepticism about whether things like online campaigns really help. Let's be absolutely clear about this: online campaigns work.

Last week, a day or two before the walkout at Gate Gourmet, we learned of a huge victory won by hotel workers in Pakistan -- a victory achieved in part through an online campaign. The campaign focussed on a dispute at the Quetta Serena Hotel, where the local union president was beaten by hotel security guards. The workers who protested this were themselves jailed. According to the global union federation IUF which led an international online protest campaign, more than 750 email messages reached the hotel. The result was a reinstatement of the union president and other activists. The local union asked the IUF "to convey their heartfelt thanks to all those who sent messages of support. The union also stated that the email messages made a visible difference to the campaign, with the management and owners clearly affected by the international response."

If a small international campaign can have that affect on a hotel in Pakistan, imagine what tens of thousands of email messages would have done to BA and Gate Gourmet.

Posted by Eric Lee at 08:47 AM | Permalink